They say there are 2 things that are guaranteed in life. Death and Taxes. I want to add a third to the list: Traffic.

Traffic and I seem to have a never-ending love affair. It keeps following me everywhere, never letting me go, always behind me and haunting me.

Traffic is really everywhere. There’s this highway here called the ’101′. It’s Silicon Valley’s equivalent of Bangalore’s Hosur Road. Now, this is a nice 5-lane-each-direction highway, but it looks like a parking garage during rush hour. Full of cars going at two-and-a-half kmph. And at one of the exits, you have to wait at the same signal -three times- to cross it. Aahh….just like Marathalli bridge in Bangalore. And the other day, they’d dug up 2 lanes of this highway causing even more traffic jams – just like the roads back home. It felt so good. I think I’ve developed an emotional attachment with the 101.

But traffic out here is boring. You have to sit and twiddle your thumbs and just follow the car in front of you. You can’t even honk or overtake or get out and swear at random people. In Bangalore, on the other hand, traffic is very alive and happening. People are honking, the 2-wheelers are trying to squeeze through, pedestrians are running for their lives and the killer autos are driving on the footpaths. Driving in Bangalore is a challenge. It’s exciting and fun. Driving here is a chore.

Driving on the highway is also very different. I remember the first time I drove on a US interstate. Nice wide road, people actually following lane discipline and no signals anywhere. I thought – Wow! This is so cool! But soon, I discovered just how boring it gets. You can’t overspeed, you can’t pretend you’re driving an F1 car and you can’t zig-zag through the other cars. You just have to follow the car in front of you. Even worse, the cars here have this ‘cruise control’ feature that can do ‘follow-the-car-in-front’ thing automatically. You don’t have to do anything! How boring :(

Compare that to driving on a highway in India – You can do just whatever the hell you like. Plus, there is a real risk of you crashing into a buffalo. You can drive at whatever speed, in whatever lane, in whatever direction. You are the king! All these things make the driving exciting. Makes you feel ALIVE!

Since we have to live with traffic anyway, I’ll take the traffic in Bangalore anyday. It’s like going on the roller-coaster everytime. I can’t wait to drive on Bangalore’s roads again.

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